IAM1349 – Fitness Coach Helps Community using his Health Code Program

David is a fitness entrepreneur who has adapted to the hybrid virtual training landscape throughout the past 2 years of the pandemic. Through David's experience as a clinical exercise physiologist and sports performance coach, he has gained a vast amount of knowledge to help people of all ages achieve their fitness goals. He currently is connecting with the Ward 8 community of DC with a healthy lifestyle program called The Health Code to further educate the community on the three codes of living healthy which are finding your level of activity outside of work, proper healthy nutrition, and the right type of mental and physical rejuvenation to prepare yourself for the upcoming day.

• CEO Story: Ikenga stands for a place of strength. Taken from the culture of West Africa. Working in multiple fields in the clinical and sports route gives David a strong foundation to become what it takes to be a fitness entrepreneur.
• Business Service: Fitness company targeting those who do not know where to start in their fitness. Gives advice about nutritional habits.
• Secret Sauce: Experienced in the clinical route and sports route. Understanding all things fitness-related and nutritional health.
• CEO Hack: App mentioned, Balance (app for meditation). Book: Atomic Habits (building good habits) and Spin Selling (selling your brand).
• CEO Nugget: Don’t give up. Continue to keep on building.
• CEO Defined: Understanding customer service and being adaptable to all levels of the environment.

Website: www.ikengafit.com

Facebook: ikengafit

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Transcription

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00:23 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have David Clary of I Kinga Fit. David, super excited to have you on the show.

01:00 – David Clary

Thank you. Appreciate you for bringing me on.

01:02 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, excited to have you on. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Davis so you can hear about some of those awesome things. David is a fitness entrepreneur who has adapted to the hybrid virtual training landscape throughout the past few years of the pandemic. Through Davis's experience as a clinical exercise physiologist and sports performance coach, he has gained a vast amount of knowledge to help people of all ages achieve their fitness goals.

He currently is connecting with the ward aid community of DC with a health lifestyle program called the Health Code to further educate the community on the 3 codes of living healthy, which are finding your level of activity outside of work, proper healthy nutrition, and the right type of mental and physical rejuvenation to prepare yourself for the upcoming day. And I'm definitely gonna say that David is a proud graduate as well as 2 of the Mecca Howard University. So super excited to have you on David. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:58 – David Clary

I sure am been ready.

02:00 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's make it happen then, Bison. So before I jump more into hearing what you do, I wanted to rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you got started, what I touched on, and what I like to call your CEO story.

02:10 – David Clary

Yeah. So I guess you can tell the story behind Ikinga Fit. Well, first, before we get into all that, to my personal story, I pretty much established Ikinga Fit, just to kind of dig a little bit deeper into my African roots. Ikinga stands for a place of strength, and that really resides with, you know, with obviously the fitness side of what I'm trying to do here. It's from the Igbo culture of West Africa.

I'm kind of, I'm not African, specifically African American, of course, but I'm always trying to connect with my African roots. And this is kind of my way of, you know, connecting with that community. But it really kind of took the pandemic to really kind of understand that I can really become a fitness entrepreneur on my own. Working in multiple fields, just like you mentioned before, the clinical route to the sports route allowed me to understand that I can do this on my own. So I just took that step and I've been moving since.

03:14 – Gresham Harkless

So I absolutely love that And I love, I appreciate it so much. One of my favorite questions is always asking, like, how did you come up with your business name? So hearing the foundation of what you've been able to build into the name and the reasoning behind the name is so powerful. So I almost believe, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but was it like, you know, that experience, the pandemic, a lot of times, obviously a lot of crazy things were happening but a lot of times there's a lot of opportunities and things that come about so when you say that place of strength do you feel like that became a little bit more apparent from your experience and then you know during that time that maybe was revealed a little bit more?

03:46 – David Clary

Yeah, I would say that it really allowed me to find my place of strength, which is kind of my motto. But that's kind of what everybody to approach it. I don't want to make it a cultural thing or anything like that. I mean, I want everybody to have the way, you know, to find their place of strength in whatever it might be. And yeah, the pandemic really allowed me to recognize my place of strength and understanding or adapting to the virtual world, but allowing my intellect, my knowledge from all the experiences that I've gone through and gone through at least, it's allowed me to really kind of hone in on my skillset, bringing out to the world.

04:30 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, and it's so powerful. And I appreciate you talking about, you know, that aspect, because I think, you know, your place of strength and my place of strength, our place of strength, anybody that's listening to this, it's all going to be unique to a lot of times our experience, the things that we're going through. So to be able to kind of, you know, as a lot of us were forced to during the pandemic create that space and have that space to actually see what that is. And I think that's when you really become truly powerful and being able to kind of come from there.

04:54 – David Clary

Yes, you hear right on right right on the head. That's for sure.

04:57 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more here on how you're serving your clients and working with them. Could you take us through a little bit more on what you're doing with I King of Fit?

05:05 – David Clary

Of course, yeah. So King of Fit is a fitness company. I really should say wellness company because outside of fitness programming that I do with my clientele, I also help them out with nutritional habits. I am not a dietician or licensed nutritionist, but I definitely help out individuals if they have questions about different ways that they can approach their eating habits. Once again, I'm not trying to teach them, that they should be eating this or that, or if you have diabetes, you should be doing this. Does this make you feel good, or does this make you feel bad?

And let's adjust as needed on a nutritional component. But a lot of it is outside of, sorry, during this pandemic, to say kind of throughout the pandemic, really dug a little bit more in-depth into the mental aspect of approaching your overall health. Obviously, as we all know, mental health has really been a big topic over these past 2 years. That's really, it's just as essential to get a grip on that so that your physical health can come out and be as strong as you would like it to be. But ultimately, yeah, it's a fitness company and just trying to serve anybody who doesn't have an idea of how to start their fitness.

That's that's kind of my my focus, if you will, and my target audience, and trying to figure out this is if you have no idea of what you should start or how you should do things. It's pretty much how I started the health code and want to get that reach out to the whole community, specifically once again in this ward 8 area so that they have a better idea of what to do, what not to do, how to approach their movement, their nutrition, and their rejuvenation.

06:49 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I love that. And especially like you said, being that fitness piece, but also understanding, I think so many times we look at things in silos, like we're only working on fitness. So we're not worried about diet, we're not worried about nutrition, But I love how you're able to kind of merge all those aspects and understand how they overlap and how they probably affect one another. So your well-versed sounds like an understanding of the holistic part of, I think, wellness and health and fitness at that.

07:17 – David Clary

Yeah, it's very important to have that whole that, as you said, the holistic, that 3-pronged concepts of your health, not just working out 2 to 3 times a day or eating, eating out is very important. But, you know, you got to have that balance.

07:32 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You hear a lot of times when people, depending on what quote unquote, I guess, triggers sometimes, they have like during a day, maybe stress or something like that, they might eat more or things like that, and they could be doing all the right things. They could be going, like you said, to the gym for the right amount of time. But if you're not aware, at the very least, probably asking those questions, you could be not setting that person up for as much success as they could have.

07:56 – David Clary

Right.

07:58 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I like to call your secret sauce. And this could be for yourself, the business, the combination of both. What do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

08:07 – David Clary

Yeah, so kind of what I've mentioned already, just kind of my experience over the years, working in the clinical route, working in the sports realm, and just working in the general population and different gyms from the YMCA to multiple other gyms, I've been able to get all different realms and kind of turn them into what the general population is looking for. A lot of times people have specialties in the clinical route, but they don't really have that understanding of sports-related things and how they are actually interrelated. So yeah, I guess I'd say that my secret sauce is being understanding of all things fitness-related and even understanding, having a pretty decent understanding of nutritional health.

08:56 – Gresham Harkless

So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:06 – David Clary

One of the things that I love to do is meditate, that's definitely a part of my routine every morning, every evening. If not, if, and if not one, or if I'm sorry, if not both in one or the other. I definitely like to meditate. A lot of people think that meditation is, you know, you're just sitting there and not really trying to avoid thinking about life, but that's inevitable. That's going to happen. One thing that I should say, an app that I love to use is called Balance. I love this app because it makes meditation more personalized for you. So for instance, when you're meditating and you start to think about what's going on tomorrow or what happened yesterday, that's your brain just kind of fogging up the details and you're not thinking about the concept of breathing, which really is the whole concept of meditation.

So they give you the tagline of just repeating the word thinking so that you can kind of get back to your breathing aspect of the meditation practice. I love to read, of course, and CEOs should always love to have some level of reading, even if it's just looking at a magazine, something that can always further your knowledge based on your topic of interest. But for me specifically, I love Atomic Habits. That's one of my favorite books to always kind of go back to. I don't reread it. I just kind of, I've read it obviously from start to finish, but I just kind of go back to different chapters just to reiterate things in my mind.

Another book called Spin Selling, just obviously as a personal trainer myself, I suggest all fitness trainers, even if you are working at a gym, look into that book. It's something that really gives you an idea of how you can kind of sell your brand. Ultimately, even if you're at a gym, it's you that the people are trying to, are signing up for. Yes, they have signed up for the gym, but they're really if they're investing in you as a trainer, they're investing in your brand.

11:10 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:21 – David Clary

Yeah. And even somebody else, I'm sure somebody would definitely resonate with what I would say don't give up. You know, there's a lot of challenges with being an entrepreneur, trying to push yourself and push your brand and find those sales. There's going to be specific to the fitness world. I can't really speak on any other specialty. But specific to the fitness community, there's going to be highs and lows throughout the year. Don't give up because those highs are going to be really high and you might maintain that high you know and when those lows are low just dig deeper into your personal self.

I knew I could do this, but I always had the security of going to a gym or working at a clinic, and I just felt secure with that. But sometimes you just gotta take that step and just be comfortable with it. But don't give up because your purpose is there for a reason. The universe will reward you with the effort that you put in. You can't just sit here and expect it to come your way, even if you have a great number of followers or you have a good clientele base, you still have to continue to keep on building because one day those clients aren't gonna always be there or those followers aren't always going to like that post that you think is the best post. So just don't let your, don't beat yourself up, or don't allow the mentality to hold you back from your purpose on what you wanna do, the business.

12:59 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping our different quote-unquote CEOs on this. So, David, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:10 – David Clary

CEO, being a CEO to me means understanding customer service, but also being adaptable to all levels of environments. And I say customer service because you have to understand how to talk to individuals, regardless of whatever field. Obviously, being in the fitness realm, definitely have to understand how to talk to individuals and respond to their reactions. But you also have to be able to work with their energy. Sometimes, a client may give off negative energy, but it's important to either set them aside or learn to adapt to their behavior.

This is because even if that one client isn't the best energy for you, they might be able to refer you to someone who can provide the positive energy you're looking for. So everybody has their own personal idea behind it, but I say don't push the people away just yet. If you still feel kind of weird about them because you never know what next door they might open for you on top of other things that revolving doors that might that might open up for you.

14:20 – Gresham Harkless

So awesome, David, truly appreciate that definition. And I of course appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people could get ahold of you and find out all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:35 – David Clary

Yeah, so Gresham, thanks again. I appreciate you for, you know, giving me this voice. Ultimately, as an entrepreneur, that's what it's all about is finding ways to connect and network with individuals. Anybody can find me on my website www.ikengafit.com. I'm just like what we started in the very beginning. I have established the health code, which is a healthy lifestyle program. I need the most support in building a strong community in Ward 8. I want to start in the Ward 8 area and then expand to other regions around the country.

But starting here, this is where I live and where I want to make the most impact. And I definitely believe the Water Area deserves my knowledge. So please support us, you can sign up. It's a free healthy lifestyle program. It happens every 2 weeks. It's in partnership with the Good Foods Market in various areas of the city, specifically off South Capitol Street, Southwest, and DC. Please come out in person. If you can't come out in person because you just feel apprehensive or you have to quarantine or anything like that, you can follow me, you can join in virtually. It's through Zoom.

15:58 – Gresham Harkless

Of course, we're gonna have the links and information as well in the show notes so that everybody can get a hold of your website, all the socials, and all those things. I appreciate the work that you do and the reason why you do what you do. So I appreciate that.

16:08 – David Clary

Thank you. I appreciate that. And I appreciate you for obviously once you can give me this opportunity to voice my experience and my knowledge to the world.

16:17 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Have a phenomenal rest of the day, David.

16:20 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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